Kevjn Lim

S&P Global Market Intelligence

This chapter situates the explanatory factors and dependent variable (strategic adjustments) within the Iranian context. It broaches the challenge of measuring relative power, and influence, and shows how ‘objective’ indicators are important but remain inadequate without factoring in perceptions and ideas. The chapter then discusses identity format...

This chapter lays out the book’s conceptual and theoretical boundaries, defines grand strategy, and shows why existing IR theories culminating in neoclassical realism are inadequate for the specified research aims. The chapter takes neoclassical realism as point of departure, but methodically deconstructs a number of its flaws from a theoretical vi...

This chapter, a brief prelude, examines the ‘Jacobin’ period of the 1980s, and jumps right into showing how external pressures and the dominance of the radicals jointly produced Restrictive Revisionism, and in turn, strategies like hard expansionism, balancing, and subversion.

This chapter traces how the Ahmadinejad presidency’s rising threat perceptions over the nuclear controversy led to Restrictive Revisionism, which in turn ushered in a shift back towards mainly balancing and subversion (astuce). It also shows that even if revisionists may not reject negotiations altogether, deviation from revisionists’ commitment to...

This chapter documents the rise of the neoconservatives and its effect, under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, on the balance of domestic politics amid a period of decreasing threat perceptions. This in turn produced a Permissive Revisionist first-order orientation, which at the level of second-order strategy accompanied soft expansionism on multiple...

This chapter documents the shift in both perception of external threat and domestic factional dominance under President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s first term, leading to Permissive Accommodationism, and matching strategies such as engagement with the West, and retrenchment for a focus on domestic post-war economic and military rehabilitation. T...

The introduction sets out the puzzle of Iran’s strategic behavior, a brief summary of the book’s argument, and Iran’s place and significance in regional and world politics. It then surveys the collective intellectual effort that has gone into understanding and explaining Iranian behavior, spells out how the book contributes, and maps out the chapte...

This chapter discusses the Ahmadinejad-Rouhani presidential turnover amid high threat perceptions, leading to Restrictive Accommodationism when Hassan Rouhani won the elections. It then examines the second-order strategies in play, namely appeasement with respect to the P5+1 during nuclear negotiations, but also in a different arena, a form of bala...

This chapter shows how a lowering of threat perception and Mohammad Khatami’s electoral victory jointly gave rise to Permissive Accommodationism, which in turn produced the most high-level and optimistic engagement efforts to date with the US and the West. But the chapter also shows Khatami’s deep preoccupation with domestic reforms, mainly social...

This chapter tracks the rise in external threat perceptions, still under Rafsanjani’s presidency, to now produce Restrictive Accommodationism. It documents the changes in second-order strategies, namely bandwagoning and appeasement mainly with respect to the US, with some ongoing balancing in the rear ground including with Russia and China, and sup...

This chapter documents the events from September 11, 2001, leading to an increase in perception of external threat while Khatami was still president, to now produce Restrictive Accommodationism. The chapter traces the changes at the level of second-order strategies, namely bandwagoning and appeasement with the US in regard to the Afghan and Iraqi w...

This chapter weaves together the empirical findings with the theoretical argument, tentatively extends the analysis to Rouhani’s second term, and offers some policy implications. It then pushes further still, beyond the Iranian case, to demonstrate how the theoretical model in its specified form also applies to the People’s Republic of China throug...

Changes in Iran’s executive authority have produced changes in its grand strategy, under the same Supreme Leader and despite shared revolutionary boundaries.

In late April, Israeli media reported on a possible cyberattack on several water and sewage treatment facilities around the country. Israel’s national water agency initially spoke of a technical malfunction, but later acknowledged it was a cyberstrike. According to Israeli officials, the event caused no damage other than limited disruptions in loca...

This article examines the intersection of Big Data and strategic intelligence from a theoretical-conceptual viewpoint. Adopting Popperian refutation as a starting point, it approaches methodological issues surrounding the incorporation of Big Data into the intelligence cycle, and argues that Big Data analytics is best used to discern long-term deve...

This article reviews national security decision-making in the Iranian context by focusing on institutions, formal process and individuals. It specifically examines the Supreme National Security Council, which formalizes and embodies the decision-making process, as well as the Revolutionary Guards, which epitomize both the influence of institutions...

This study sets out to investigate the historical weakness of centrist parties amid Israel's high-pressure politics and low levels of ideological consensus. In the analysis, it is argued that beneath the ostensible circumstantial reasons for dysfunction, such parties may also suffer from the systemic 'occupation of the centre' phenomenon and from a...